After Moving Slow As Corpse, ‘Zombieland 2’ Gets Writer And Urgency

EXCLUSIVE: Sony Pictures looks to be getting more serious about mounting another installment of Zombieland. Studio just hired Dave Callaham to write the sequel under the supervision of Ruben Fleischer, who’ll return to direct. Gavin Polone is producing. Callaham’s script Barrow became The Expendables, and his recent credits include Legendary’s revival of Godzilla, and most recently Jackpot, a Focus Features film based on a story by Swedish crime writer Jo Nesbo that has Will Gluck producing. It was that darkly comic tale that sparked Sony to hire him for the Zombieland sequel. Callaham also did a production rewrite on Marvel’s Ant-Man. Insiders at the studio said no deal with Fleischer, but that of corpse they are getting serious about mounting the sequel of a 2009 cult favorite sleeper film that grossed $100 million worldwide. Not sure if the participants will be back; pretty much all of them have soared since making the original, from Jesse Eisenberg to Emma Stone, True Detective’s Woody Harrelson, Abigail Breslin (who plays the title zombie in the upcoming Maggie), and Bill Murray, who’s upcoming in St. Vincent. Latter wasn’t properly positioned for a return and if he wouldn’t do another Ghostbusters, a reprise here couldn’t be as cool as it was the first go around. UTA and Kaplan/Perrone rep Callaham along with attorneys Gretchen Rush and Dan Fox.

Translation: “It’s too late now, considering all of the cast has moved on. And if they’re not coming back, then they should cast new characters with new actors – not simply recast the old characters. If any or all of the old characters get recast, I’m going to wait for Netflix”. Or at least I think that’s what he said.

Why the hell would Murray come back? His was a cameo where he got his chest blown out. Please tell me not as a zombie. And while I love Emma Stone I think that whole story played out with that group. What could you possibly do that would be interesting, and not a repeat of what they did in the original?

Melanie • on Oct 1, 2014 8:35 am

I was excited (for a moment) about a sequel to this movie, but yea you can’t really do anything with the characters from the first film. Not just because they’ve all moved on (Harrelson and Eisenberg killed it in “Now You See Me”) as actors, but the conflict of the characters in this film was resolved. And I swear if Murray is brought back as a zombie, and that’s the main premise of the film – like he’s a rogue zombie that needs to be tracked and killed – I won’t waste my money on this one. Hollywood…*sigh* It’s a sad place with a lot of its movies as of late.